The book of the ladies

I leave you to suppose what this sentence was to the queen, having heard it thus with her own ears, and whether she had no occasion for fear, although she was thus defended by M. de Guise. From what I have heard tell by one of her most intimate ladies, she feared they would strike the blow without the knowledge of M. de Guise, as indeed she had reason to do; for in deeds so detestable an upright man should always be distrusted, and the act not communicated to him. She was thus compelled to consider her safety, and employ those she saw already under arms [the Prince de Condé and other Protestant leaders], begging them to have pity for a mother and her children.

That is the whole cause, just as it was, of the civil war. She would never go to Orléans with the others, nor give them the king and her children, as she could have done; and she was very glad that in the hurly-burly of arms she and the king her son and her other children were in safety, as was reasonable. Moreover, she requested and held the promise of the others that whenever she should summon them to lay down their arms they would do so; which, nevertheless, they would not do when the time came, no matter what appeals she made to them, and what pains she took, and the great heat she endured at Talsy, to induce them to listen to the peace she could have made good and secured for all France had they then listened to her; and this great fire and others we have since seen lighted from this first brand would have been forever extinguished in France if they would then have trusted her. I know what I myself have heard her say, with the tears in her eyes, and with what zeal she endeavoured to do it.

This is why they cannot charge her with the first spark of the civil war, nor yet with the second, which was the day of Meaux; for at that time she was thinking only of a hunt, and of giving pleasure to the king in her beautiful house at Monceaux. The warning came that M. le Prince and others of the Religion were in arms and advancing to surprise and seize the king under colour of presenting a request. God knows who was the cause of this new disturbance, and without the six thousand Swiss then lately raised, who knows what might have happened? This levy of Swiss was only the pretext of their taking up arms, and of saying and publishing that it was done to force them to war. In fact it was they, themselves, as I know from being at Court, who requested that levy of the king and queen, on the passage of the Duke of Alba and his army, fearing that under colour of reaching Flanders he might descend upon the frontiers of France; and they urged that it was the custom to arm the frontiers whenever a neighbouring State was arming. No one can be ignorant how urgent for this they were to the king and queen by letters and embassies, – even M. le Prince himself and M. l’amiral [Coligny] coming to see the king on this subject at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where I saw them.

I would also like to ask (for all that I write here I saw myself) who it was who took up arms on Shrove Tuesday, and who suborned and solicited Monsieur the king’s brother, and the King of Navarre, to give ear to the enterprises for which Mole and Coconas were executed in Paris. It was not the queen, for it was by her prudence that she prevented them from uprising, – by keeping Monsieur and the King of Navarre so locked in to the forest of Vincennes that they could not set out; and on the death of King Charles she held them so tightly in Paris and the Louvre, barring their windows one morning, – at any rate those of the King of Navarre, who was lodged on the lower floor (the King of Navarre, told me this himself with tears in his eyes), – that they could not escape as they intended, which would greatly have embroiled the State and prevented the return of Poland to the King, which was what they were after. I know all this from having been invited to the fricassée, which was one of the finest strokes ever made by the queen. Starting from Paris she conducted them to Lyons to meet the king so dexterously that no one who saw them would ever have supposed them prisoners; they went in the same coach with her, and she presented them herself to the king, who, on his side, pardoned them soon after.

Also, who was it that enticed Monsieur the king’s brother to leave Paris one fine night and the company of his brother who loved him well, and whose affection he cast off to go and take up arms and embroil all France? M. de La Noue knows well, and also the secret plots that began at the siege of Rochelle, and what I said to him about them. It was not the queen-mother, for she felt such grief at seeing one brother banded against another brother and his king, that she swore she would die of it, or else replace and reunite them as before – which she did; for I heard her say at Blois, in conversation with Monsieur, that she prayed for nothing so much as that God would grant her the favour of that reunion, after which he might send her death and she would accept it with all her heart; or else she would gladly retire to her houses of Monceaux and Chenonceaux, and never mix further in the affairs of France, wishing to end her days in tranquillity. In fact, she truly wished to do the latter; but the king implored her to abstain, for he and his kingdom had great need of her. I am assured that if she had not made this peace at that time, all was over with France, for there were in the country fifty thousand foreigners, from one region or another, who would have aided in humbling and destroying her.

It was, therefore, not the queen who called to arms at this time to satisfy the State-Assembly at Blois, the which, wanting but one religion and proposing to abolish that which was contrary to their own, demanded, if the spiritual blade did not suffice to abolish it, that recourse should be had to the temporal. Some have said that the queen had bribed them; that is false. I do not say that she did not bribe them later, which was a fine stroke of policy and intelligence; but it was not she who called together the said Assembly; so far from that, she blamed them for all, and also because they lessened greatly the king’s authority and her own. It was the party of the Religion which had long demanded that Assembly, and required by the terms of the last peace that it should be called together and assembled; to which the queen objected strongly, foreseeing abuses. However, to content them because they clamoured for it so much, they had it, to their own confusion and damage, and not to their profit and contentment as they expected, so that finally they took up arms. Thus it was still not the queen who did so.

Neither was it she who caused them to be taken up when Mont-de-Marsan, La Fère in Picardy, and Cahors were taken. I remember what the king said to M. de Miossans, who came to him on behalf of the King of Navarre; he rebuffed him harshly, and told him that while those princes were cloying him with fine words they were calling to arms and taking cities.

Now that is how this queen was the instigator of all our wars and civil fires, the which, while she never lighted them, she spent her pains and labour in striving to extinguish, abhorring to see so many of the nobles and men of honour die. And without that, and without her commiseration, they who have hated her with mortal hatred would have been ill-off, and their party underground and not flourishing as it now is; which must be imputed to her kindness, of which we now have sore need, for, as every one says and the poor people cry, “We have no longer the queen-mother to make peace for us.” It was not her fault that peace was not made when she went to Guyenne lately to treat of it with the King of Navarre and the Prince de Condé.

They have tried to accuse her also of being an accomplice in the wars of the League. Why, then, should she have brought about the peace of which I speak if she were that? Why should she have pacified the riot of the barricades in Paris? Why should she have reconciled the king and the Duc de Guise only to destroy the latter and kill him?

Well, let them launch into such foul abuse against her all they will, never shall we have another queen in France so good for peace.

They have accused her of that massacre in Paris [the Saint-Bartholomew]; all that is a sealed book to me, for at that time I was preparing to embark at Brouage; but I have often heard it said that she was not the chief actress in it. There were three or four others, whom I might name, who were more ardent in it than she and pushed her on, making her believe, from the threats uttered on the wounding of M. l’amiral, that the king was to be killed, and she with all her children and the whole Court, or else that the country would be in arms much worse than ever. Certainly the party of Religion did very wrong to make the threats it is said they made; for they brought on the fate of poor M. l’amiral, and procured his death. If they had kept themselves quiet, said no word, and let M. l’amiral’s wound heal, he could have left Paris at his ease, and nothing further would have come of it. M. de La Noue was of that opinion. He and M. Strozzi and I have often spoken of it, he not approving of such bravados, audacities, and threats as were made at the very Court of the king in his city of Paris; and he greatly blamed M. de Theligny, his brother-in-law, who was one of the hottest, calling him and his companions perfect fools and most incapable. M. l’amiral never used such language as I have heard from others, at least not aloud. I do not say that in secret and private with his intimate friends he never spoke it. That was the cause of the death of M. l’amiral and the massacres of his people, and not the queen; as I have heard say by those who know well, although there are many from whose heads you could never oust the opinion that this train was long laid and the plot long in hatching. It is all false. The least passionate think as I have said; the more passionate and obstinate believe the other way; and very often we give credit for the ordering of events to kings and great princes, and say after those events have happened how prudent and provident they were, and how well they knew how to dissimulate, when all the while they knew no more about them than a plum.

To return again to our queen; her enemies have put it about that she was not a good Frenchwoman. God knows with what ardour I saw her urge that the English might be driven from France at Havre de Grâce, and what she said of it to M. le Prince, and how she made him go with many gentlemen of his party, and the crown-companies of M. d’Andelot, and other Huguenots, and how she herself led the army, mounted usually on a horse, like a second beautiful Queen Marfisa, exposing herself to the arquebusades and the cannonades as if she were one of her captains, looking to the making of the batteries, and saying she should never be at ease until she had taken that town and driven the English out of France; hating worse than poison those who had sold it to them. And thus she did so much that finally she made the country French.

When Rouen was besieged, I saw her in the greatest anger when she beheld supplies entering the town by means of a French galley captured the year before, she fearing that the place, failing to be taken by us, would come under the dominion of the English. For this reason she pushed hard at the wheel, as they say, to take it, and never failed every day to come to the fort Sainte-Catherine to hold council and see the firing. I have often seen her passing along the covered way of Sainte-Catherine, the cannonades and arquebusades raining round her, and she caring nothing for them.

Those who were there saw her as I did; there are still many ladies, her maids of honour who accompanied her, to whom the firing was not too pleasant; I knew this for I saw them there; but when M. le connétable and M. de Guise remonstrated with her, telling her some misfortune would come of it, she only laughed and said: Why should she spare herself more than they, inasmuch as she had as good courage as they had, though not their strength, which her sex denied her? As for fatigue, she endured that well, whether on foot or on horseback. I think that for long there had never been a queen or a princess better on horseback, sitting with such grace, – not appearing, for all that, like a masculine dame, in form and style a fantastic amazon, but a comely princess, beautiful, agreeable, and gentle.

They said of her that she was very Spanish. Certainly as long as her good daughter lived [Élisabeth, wife of Philip II.] she loved Spain; but after her daughter died we knew, at least some of us, whether she had reason to love it, either country or nation. True it is that she was always so prudent that she chose to treat the King of Spain as her good son-in-law, in order that he in turn should treat better her good and beautiful daughter, as is the custom of good mothers; so that he never came to trouble France, nor to bring war there, according to his brave heart and natural ambition.

Others have also said that she did not like the nobility of France and desired much to shed its blood. I refer for that to the many times that she made peace and spared that blood; besides which, attention should be paid to this, namely: that while she was regent, and her children minors, there were not known at Court so many quarrels and combats as we have seen there since; she would not allow them, and forbade expressly all duelling and punished those who transgressed that order. I have seen her at Court, when the king went away to stay some days and she was left absolute and alone, at a time when quarrels had begun again and were becoming common, also duelling, which she never would permit, – I have known her, I say, give a sudden order to the captain of the guards to make arrests, and to the marshals and captains to pacify the quarrel; so that, to tell the truth, she was more feared than the king; for she knew how to talk to the disobedient and the dissolute, and rebuke them terribly.

I remember that once, the king having gone to the baths of Bourbon, my late cousin La Chastaignerie had a quarrel with Pardailhan. She had him searched for, in order to forbid him, on his life, to fight a duel; but not being able to find him for two whole days, she had him tracked so well that on a Sunday morning, he being on the island of Louviers awaiting his enemy, the grand provost arrived to arrest him, and took him prisoner to the Bastille by order of the queen. But he stayed there only one night; for she sent for him and gave him a reprimand, partly sharp and partly gentle, because she was really kind, and was harsh only when she chose to be. I know very well what she said to me also when I was for seconding my said cousin, namely: that as the older I ought to have been the wiser.

The year that the king returned to Poland a quarrel arose between Messieurs de Grillon and d’Entraigues, two brave and valiant gentlemen, who being called out and ready to fight, the king forbade them through M. de Rambouillet, one of his captains of the guard then in quarters, and he ordered M. de Nevers and the Maréchal de Retz to make up the quarrel, which they failed in doing. That evening the queen sent for them both into her room; and as their quarrel was about two great ladies of her household, she commanded them with great sternness, and then besought them both in all gentleness, to leave to her the settlement of their differences; inasmuch as, having done them the honour to meddle in it, and the princes, marshals, and captains having failed in making them agree, it was now a point of honour with her to have the glory of doing so: by which she made them friends, and they embraced without other forms, taking all from her; so that by her prudence the subject of the quarrel, which was delicate, and rather touched the honour of the two ladies, was never known publicly. That was the true kindness of a princess! And then to say she did not like the nobility! Ha! the truth was, she noticed and esteemed it too much. I think there was not a great family in the kingdom with whom she was not acquainted; she used to say she had learned from King François the genealogies of the great families of his kingdom; and as for the king, her husband, he had this faculty, that when he had once seen a nobleman he knew him always, in face, in deeds, and in reputation.

I have seen the queen, often and ordinarily, while the king, her son, was a minor, take the trouble to present to him herself the gentlemen of his kingdom, and put them in his memory thus: “Such a one did service to the king your grandfather, at such and such times and places; and this one served your father;” and so on, – commanding him to remember all this, and to love them and do well by them, and recognize them at other times; which he knew very well how to do, for, through such instruction, this king recognized readily all men of character and race and honour throughout his kingdom.

Detractors have also said that she did not like her people. What appears? Were there ever so many tailles, subsidies, imposts, and other taxes while she was governing during the minority of her children as have since been drawn in a single year? Was it proved that she had all that hidden money in the banks of Italy, as people said? Far from that, it was found after her death that she had not a single sou; and, as I have heard some of her financiers and some of her ladies say, she was indebted eight thousand crowns, the wages of her ladies, gentlemen, and household officers, due a year, and the revenue of the whole year spent; so that some months before her death her financiers showed her these necessities; but she laughed and said one must praise God for all and find something to live on. That was her avarice and the great treasure she amassed, as people said! She never amassed anything, for she had a heart wholly noble, liberal, and magnificent, like her great uncle, Pope Leo, and that magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici. She spent or gave away everything; erecting buildings, spending in honourable magnificences, and taking pleasure in giving recreations to her people and her Court, such as festivals, balls, dances, tournaments and spearing the ring [couremens de bague], of which latter she held three that were very superb during her lifetime: one at Fontainebleau on the Shrove Tuesday after the first troubles; where there were tourneys and breaking of lances and combats at the barrier, – in short, all sorts of feats of arms, with a comedy on the subject of the beautiful Genevra of Ariosto, which she caused to be represented by Mme. d’Angoulême and her most beautiful and virtuous princesses and the ladies and damoiselles of her Court, who certainly played it very well, and so that nothing finer was ever seen. The second was at Bayonne, at the interview between the queen and her good daughter Élisabeth, Queen of Spain, where the magnificence was such in all things that the Spanish, who are very disdainful of other countries than their own, swore they had never seen anything finer, and that their own king could not approach it; and thus they returned to Spain much edified.

I know that many in France blamed this expense as being superfluous; but the queen said that she did it to show foreigners that France was not so totally ruined and poverty-stricken because of the late wars as they thought; and that if for such tourneys she was able to spend so much, for matters of importance she could surely do better, and that France was all the more feared and esteemed, whether through the sight of such wealth and richness, or through that of the prowess of her gentlemen, so brave and adroit at arms; as indeed there were many there very good to see and worthy to be admired. Moreover, it was very reasonable that for the greatest queen of Christendom, the most beautiful, the most virtuous, and the best, some great solemn festival above all others should be held. And I can assure you that if this had not been done, the foreigners would have mocked us and gone back to Spain thinking and holding us all in France to be beggars.

Therefore it was not without good and careful consideration that this wise and judicious queen made this outlay. She made another very fine one on the arrival of the Poles in Paris, whom she feasted most superbly in her Tuileries; after which, in a great hall built on purpose and surrounded by an infinite number of torches, she showed them the finest ballet that was ever seen on earth (I may indeed say so); the which was composed of sixteen of her best-taught ladies and damoiselles, who appeared in a great rock [roc, grotto?] all silvered, where they were seated in niches, like vapours around it. These sixteen ladies represented the sixteen provinces of France, with the most melodious music ever heard; and after having made, in this rock, the tour of the hall, like a parade in camp, and letting themselves be seen of every one, they descended from the rock and formed themselves into a little battalion, fantastically imagined, with violins to the number of thirty sounding a warlike air extremely pleasant; and thus they marched to the air of the violins, with a fine cadence they never lost, and so approached, and stopped before their Majesties. After which they danced their ballet, most fantastically invented, with so many turns, counterturns, and gyrations, such twining and blending, such advancing and pausing (though no lady failed to find her place and rank), that all present were astonished to see how in such a maze order was not lost for a moment, and that all these ladies had their judgment clear and held it good, so well were they taught! This fantastic ballet lasted at least one hour, the which being concluded, all these sixteen ladies, representing, as I have said, the sixteen provinces, advanced to the king, the queen, the King of Poland, Monsieur his brother, the King and Queen of Navarre, and other grandees of France and Poland, presenting to each a golden salver as large as the palm of the hand, finely enamelled and beautifully chased, on which were engraved the fruits and products of each province in which they were most fertile, such as citrons and oranges in Provence, cereals in Champagne, wines in Burgundy, and in Guyenne warriors, – great honour that for Guyenne certainly! And so on, through the other provinces.

At Bayonne the like presents were made, and a combat fought, which I could represent very well, with the presents and the names of those who received them, but it would be too long. At Bayonne it was the men who gave to the ladies; here, it was the ladies giving to the men. Take note that all these inventions came from no other devising and brain than that of the queen; for she was mistress and inventress of everything; she had such faculty that whatever magnificences were done at Court, hers surpassed all others. For which reason they used to say there was no one like the queen-mother for doing fine things. If such outlays were costly, they gave great pleasure; and people often said she wished to imitate the Roman emperors, who studied to exhibit games to their people and give them pleasures, and so amuse them as not to leave them leisure to do harm.

Besides the pleasure she took in giving pleasure to her people, she also gave them much to earn; for she liked all sorts of artisans and paid them well; employing them each in his own art, so that they never wanted for work, especially masons and builders, as is shown by her beautiful houses: the Tuileries (still unfinished), Saint-Maur, Monceaux, and Chenonceaux. Also she liked learned men, and was pleased to read, and she made others read, the books they presented to her, or those that she knew they had written. All were acceptable, even to the fine invectives which were published against her, about which she scoffed and laughed, without anger, calling those who wrote them gabblers and “givers of trash” – that was her use of the word.

She wished to know everything. On the voyage to Lorraine, during the second troubles, the Huguenots had with them a fine culverin to which they gave the name of “the queen-mother.” They were forced to bury it at Villenozze, not being able to drag it on account of its long shafts and bad harness and weight; after which it never could be found again. The queen, hearing that they had given it her name, wanted to know why. A certain person, having been much urged by her to tell her, replied: “Because, madame, it has a calibre [diameter] broader and bigger than that of others.” The queen was the first to laugh at this reply.

She spared no pains in reading anything that took her fancy. I saw her once, having embarked at Blaye to go and dine at Bourg, reading the whole way from a parchment, like any lawyer or notary, a procès-verbal made on Derbois, favourite secretary of the late M. le connétable, as to certain underhand dealings and correspondence of which he was accused and for which imprisoned at Bayonne. She never took her eyes off it until she had read it through; and there were more than ten pages of parchment. When she was not hindered, she read herself all letters of importance, and frequently with her own hand made replies; I saw her once, after dinner, write twenty long letters herself.

She wrote and spoke French very well, although an Italian; and even to persons of her own nation she usually spoke it, so much did she honour France and its language; taking pains to exhibit its fine speech to foreigners, grandees, and ambassadors, who came to visit her after seeing the king. She always answered them very pertinently, with great grace and majesty; as I have also seen and heard her do to the courts of parliament, both publicly and privately; often controlling the latter finely when they rambled in talk or were over-cautious, or would not comply with the edicts made in her privy council and the ordinances issued by the king and herself. You may be sure she spoke as a queen and made herself feared as one. I saw her once at Bordeaux when she took her daughter Marguerite to her husband, the King of Navarre. She had commanded that court of parliament to come and be spoken to, – they not being willing to abolish a certain brotherhood, by them invented and maintained, which she was determined to break up, foreseeing that it would bring some results in the end which might be prejudicial to the State. They came to meet her in the garden of the Bishop’s house, where she was walking one Sunday morning. One among them spoke for all, and gave her to understand the fruitfulness of this brotherhood and the utility it was to the public. She, without being prepared, replied so well and with such apt words, and apparent and appropriate reasons to show it was ill-founded and odious, that there was no one present who did not admire the mind of the queen and remain confused and astonished when, as her last word, she said: “No, I will, and the king my son wills that it be exterminated, and never heard of again, for secret reasons that I shall not tell you, besides those that I have told you; and if not, I will make you feel what it is to disobey the king and me.” So each and all went away and nothing more was said of it.

She did these turns very often to the princes and the greatest people, when they had done some great wrong and made her so angry that she took her haughty air, – no one on earth being so superb and stately as she, when needful, sparing no truths to any one. I have seen the late M. de Savoie, who was intimate with the emperor, the King of Spain, and so many grandees, fear and respect her more than if she had been his mother, and M. de Lorraine the same, – in short, all the great people of Christendom; I could give many examples; but another time, in due course, I will tell them; just now it suffices to say what I have said.

Among other perfections she was a good Christian and very devout; always making her Easters, and never failing any day to attend divine service at mass and vespers; which she rendered very agreeable to pious persons, by the good singers of her chapel, – she being careful to collect the most exquisite; also she herself loved music by nature, and often gave pleasure with it in her apartment, which was never closed to virtuous ladies and honourable men, she seeing all and every one, not restricting it as they do in Spain, and also in her own land of Italy; nor yet as our later queens, Isabella of Austria and Louise of Lorraine, have done; but saying, like King François, her father-in-law (whom she greatly honoured, he having set her up and made her free), that she wished to keep her Court as a good Frenchwoman, and as the king, her husband, would have wished; so that her apartments were the pleasure of the Court.

She had, ordinarily, very beautiful and virtuous maids of honour, who conversed with us daily in her antechamber, discoursing and chatting so wisely and modestly that none of us would have dared to do otherwise; for the gentlemen who failed in this were banished and threatened, and in fear of worse until she pardoned and forgave them, she being kind in herself and very ready to do so.

In short, her company and her Court were a true paradise in the world, and a school of all virtue and honour, the ornament of France, as the foreigners who came there knew well and said; for they were all most politely received, and her ladies and maids of honour were commanded to adorn themselves at their coming like goddesses, and to entertain these visitors, not amusing themselves elsewhere; otherwise she taunted them well and reprimanded them.

In fact, her Court was such that when she died the voices of all declared that the Court was no longer a Court, and that never again would France have a true queen-mother. What a Court it was! such as, I believe, no Emperor of Rome in the olden time ever held for ladies, nor any of our Kings of France. Though it is true that the great Emperor Charlemagne, King of France, during his lifetime took great pleasure in making and maintaining a grand and full Court of peers, dukes, counts, palatines, barons, and knights of France; also of ladies, their wives and daughters, with others of all countries, to pay court and honour (as the old romances of that day have said) to the empress and queen, and to see the fine jousts, tournaments, and magnificences done there by knights-errant coming from all parts. But what of that? These fine, grand assemblies came together not oftener than three or four times a year; at the end of each fête they departed and retired to their houses and estates until the next time. Besides, some have said that in his old age Charlemagne was much given over to women, though always of good company; and that Louis le Debonnaire, on ascending the throne, was obliged to banish his sisters to other places for the scandal of their lives with men; and also that he drove from Court a number of ladies who belonged to the joyous band. Charlemagne’s Courts were never of long duration (I speak now of his great years), for he amused himself in those days with war, according to our old romances, and in his last years his Court was too dissolute, as I have already said. But the Court of our King Henri II and the queen his wife, was held daily, whether in war or peace, and whether it resided in one place or another for months, or went to other castles and pleasure-houses of our kings, who are not lacking in them, having more than the kings of other countries.

This large and noble company, keeping always together, at least the greater part of them, came and went with its queen, so that usually her Court was filled by at least three hundred ladies and damoiselles. The intendants of the king’s houses and the quartermasters affirmed that they occupied fully one-half of the rooms, as I myself have seen during the thirty-three years I lived at Court, except when at war or in foreign parts. Having returned, I was always there; for the sojourn was to me most agreeable, not seeing elsewhere anything finer; in fact I think, since the world was, nothing has ever been seen like it; and as the noble names of these beautiful ladies who assisted our queen in adorning her Court should not be overlooked, I place them here, according as I remember them from the end of the queen’s married life and throughout her widowhood, for before that time I was too young to know them.

First, I place Mesdames the daughters of France. I place them first because they never lost their rank, and go before all others, so grand and noble is their house, to wit: —

Madame Élisabeth de France, afterwards Queen of Spain.

Madame Claude, afterwards Duchesse de Lorraine.

Madame Marguerite, afterwards Queen of Navarre.

Madame the king’s sister, afterwards Duchesse de Savoie.

The Queen of Scots, afterwards dauphine and Queen of France.

The Queen of Navarre, Jeanne d’Albret.

Madame Catherine, her daughter, to-day called Madame the king’s [Henri IV.] sister.

Madame Diane, natural daughter of the king [Henri II.], afterwards legitimatized, the Duchesse d’Angoulême.

Madame d’Enghien, of the house of Estouteville.

Madame la Princesse de Condé, of the house of Roye.

Madame de Nevers, of the house of Vendôme.

Madame de Guise, of the house of Ferrara.

Madame Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois.

Mesdames d’Aumale and de Bouillon, her daughters.[4 - Here follow the names of ninety-three ladies and sixty-six damoiselles; among the latter are “Mesdamoiselles Flammin (Fleming?) Veton (Seaton?) Beton (Beaton?) Leviston, escossoises.” The three first-named on the above list are the daughters of Henri II. and Catherine de’ Medici. – Tr.]

Need I name more? No, for my memory could not furnish them. There are so many other ladies and maids that I beg them to excuse me if I pass them by with my pen, – not that I do not greatly value and esteem them, but I should dream over them and amuse myself too much. To make an end, I must say that in all this company there was nothing to find fault with in their day; beauty abounded, all majesty, all charm, all grace; happy was he who could touch with love such ladies, and happy those who could that love escapar. I swear to you that I have named only those ladies and damoiselles who were beautiful, agreeable, very accomplished, and well sufficient to set fire to the whole world. Indeed, in their best days they burned up a good part of it, as much us gentlemen of the Court as others who approached the flame; to some of whom they were gentle, aimable, favourable, and courteous. I speak of none here, hoping to make good tales about them in this book before I finish it, and of others whose names are not comprised here; but the whole told so discreetly, without scandal, that nothing will be known, for the curtain of silence will cover their names; so that if by chance they should any of them read tales of themselves they will not be annoyed. Besides, though the pleasures of love cannot last forever, by reason of many inconveniences, hindrances, and changes, the memories of the past are always pleasing.

[This refers to “Les Dames Galantes,” and not to the present volume.]